Next week the curtain rises in Cologne, Germany, on the biggest event of the Catholic summer, as well as the most important road test to date of Benedict XVI’s papacy thereby offering insights into his ecumenical and interfaith stances according to John Allen.Next week the curtain rises in Cologne, Germany, on the biggest event of the Catholic summer, as well as the most important road test to date of Benedict XVI’s papacy.
World Youth Day begins August 15 with Marian celebrations in local parishes, though Benedict XVI doesn’t arrive until Thursday, August 18. The weeklong festival of Catholic youth, instituted by Pope John Paul II and known affectionately as the “Catholic Woodstock,” closes with a papal Mass on Sunday, August 21.
The drama of the pope’s first foreign voyage is not, however, just about the encounter with youth, or the sense of anticipation that comes with a new pope doing things for the first time. The trip also features important sessions with both Jews and Muslims, representatives of the Catholic Church’s most important inter-religious relationships, and both groups that have expressed a degree of ambivalence about the new pope and his policies.
Over these four days in August, therefore, the world will be watching for:
Turnout and mood, especially at the August 21 concluding Mass on the Marienfeld plain outside Cologne, as an indicator of Benedict XVI’s capacity to recapture John Paul II’s magic with youth. Organizers have estimated some 800,000, which would be an impressive accomplishment in ultra-secular Germany;
The key themes Benedict will strike in his public addresses, perhaps the most revealing indicator to date of the big ideas of his pontificate;
The pope’s ecumenical message, given that his native Germany is the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation, and is today roughly evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants;
The new pope’s reception in Germany, home of the most successful liberal Catholic reform movement of the modern era, the “We Are Church” movement, which garnered 2.5 million signatures in the mid-1990s for a petition demanding liberalization of church teaching in areas such as sexuality, women’s issues, and the selection of bishops;
The pope’s message at the Cologne synagogue, against the backdrop of sharp Jewish/Catholic debates over the role of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust, and equally vexed Israeli/Vatican exchanges over terrorism as well as negotiations concerning the legal status of church-run institutions in Israel;
The pope’s message in his August 20 session with Muslims, who number some 3 million in Germany, the vast majority of whom are Turkish. Some observers expect Benedict XVI to take a tougher approach to Islam than his immediate predecessor, beginning with the question of Turkey’s candidacy to join the European Union, a move that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger opposed prior to his election as pope.
Given all this subtext, Benedict XVI’s four-day homecoming to Germany will offer important clues as to both the content and the style of this new papacy, which reached the 100th-day mark on July 27.
Tags: Youth
